Cloth encounters

When Annette and Hadley D'Oyly decided to start a T-shirt business that was ethically managed from start to finish, from the organic cotton to the silk-screen inks, they had no idea of the trouble they were letting themselves in for. Andrew Purvis reports

When Annette D'Oyly begins to talk about her Animal Tails fashion label, you realise you would have to be absolutely crazy to try to make a living out of ethical clothing. Back in 2004, she and her husband Hadley came up with a supposedly simple idea: children's T-shirts that were organic (right down to the screen-printing inks), ethically traded and designed to raise awareness - and money - on behalf of the endangered species they depicted. It has proved a grind beyond their expectations, an ordeal of false starts, disappointment, late deliveries, poor workmanship and obfuscation, ranging from excessive bureaucracy to phone calls that are never returned.

"This is the issue across the board for ethical fashion," says D'Oyly, after three years of trying to get Animal Tails off the ground. "You can't just go somewhere else if you run into problems. If you're ethical, you make a commitment to one factory, one cotton field, one supplier and stick with them and work with them. It all takes a huge amount of time."

To add to the workload, every aspect of your business will be held up to scrutiny - but how do you guarantee as "ethical and organic" a supply chain that could conceivably link a cotton grower and ginner (the machine that takes the cotton fibres out of the seeds) in India, a knitter in China and an ink-maker in Germany? How do you keep track of the T-shirt miles, let alone the agrochemical count and the sweatshop abuses?

"I started with Fairtrade cotton," D'Oyly says, because she already knew of Agrocel, a cooperative in India, with "huge amounts of organic cotton" carrying the Fairtrade mark. "You just ring the cooperative up, tell them how many bales you want, and they tell you who is ginning and knitting it." The problem? "I couldn't trace their organic certification clearly," says D'Oyly - and she was worried that, although the raw cotton was bonafide Fairtrade and organic, the finished cloth might not be.

Next the couple turned to organic websites, only to discover that some of them are less scrupulous about certification than others. "With food, you cannot sell it as organic without certification," says D'Oyly. "With textiles, you can just say it's organic and there's no one to chase that up. There's a big risk in buying online."

It was then that she contacted the Soil Association, which had just begun certifying the entire process from cotton field to finished garment, using the new Global Organic Textile Standard. Qualifying products carry a label saying what percentage of organic and ethical cotton they contain, as determined by four certifying bodies worldwide. "All their factories are ethical," says D'Oyly. "They comply with the standards of the International Labour Organisation [the UN body that pushes for decent working conditions worldwide]. They look at the whole worker process; and make sure organic and social criteria complement each other."

With the Soil Association's help, she found properly certified ginning, knitting and manufacturing operations close to where the cotton was picked, shortening the supply chain and reducing the company's carbon footprint (she has never air-freighted, so "everything is coming overland, which again takes a lot more time").

Problem solved, you might think - but this was just the start. In the often sackcloth world of ethical fashion, D'Oyly wanted her T-shirts to stand out and bear comparison with couture. They had to be soft (no scratchy labels), well-cut and stylish enough to pass muster with "the ultimate consumer" - fussy, fashion-conscious kids.

"We had our market-research T-shirts made in India," she says. "The quality was good, but I wanted a bespoke design: the girls' T-shirts cut a bit more neatly to the body, the boys' ... well, it's not a sack! They couldn't do that, it was a standard, very square shape - and the screen-printing, well ..." She breathes in sharply. "That supply chain fell apart" so she (guiltily) found another in Turkey.

Over months, she built up a relationship with this new supplier, finding out from others in the business where to source the organic inks that Animal Tails needed, talking to representatives on the phone and meeting them in London (though she never visited Turkey). But when the first sample screen-print arrived, D'Oyly was horrified.

"I opened the package eagerly," she says, "and - aaarghh - the colour was wrong, the registration wrong." She holds up the fabric (depicting an African wild dog - "very endangered") next to the paper design. "The nose is cut off, there are gaps, the colour keeps slipping into this muddy dark brown." By comparison, an early dummy she had printed by a UK company is spot on - but, being ethical, she could hardly switch because the whole premise of her business was to build long-term relationships.

It wasn't a language problem, more a lack of access to proper technology, training and education. "If you go to China, you know they have all the technology and all the skills - but you also know workers there are stuck in factories for hour after hour," says D'Oyly.

A dodgy product is easier to fix than dodgy ethics, so D'Oyly set about improving it: "I remember saying, 'When you've done the screen, put the paper image next to it; if you see any difference in colour, it's wrong'." After four exasperating months and 12 attempts, the African wild dog is perfect.

Now, the worry is whether the supplier will deliver in time for a September launch. "If they're behind, you can't say, 'I'm sorry, but your factory will have to work all night', as you might in mainstream industry. That's just not on."

Three years down the line, she feels that the problems of setting up an ethical supply chain were a "breeze" compared with "guaranteeing the quality - and the time you have to put in after that too," says D'Oyly. "I did nine months of market research, talking to people about what's out there, walking around buying stuff, going to ethical fashion events. But in the end it's been worth it."

· Animal Tails (020-8525 2844, animaltails.co.uk) launches in September. Some T-shirts are on sale at Fresh & Wild in Stoke Newington, London N16, at £24.